It’s being called the “copyright Armageddon,” a looming legal battle between manufacturers and the Internet, thanks to the increasing popularity of 3D printers. With some desktop units available for as little as $500, almost anyone can now print plastic items from the comfort of home—tools and toys, house decorations, even musical instruments. The possibilities seem limitless—and so, too, does the potential for piracy.

Internet piracy has been an issue ever since Shawn Fanning created the music file-sharing program Napster. Though Napster was shut down in 2001, after one of the biggest copyright battles in history, piracy has only spread, from music to movies and books. But until recently, online theft has been limited to data, not physical objects.

Now some file-sharing websites are taking advantage of what many expect to be the next digital revolution. Popular music and video downloading website the Pirate Bay has rolled out a database for 3D downloads. The 3D printers, which are about the size of a microwave, read the files—essentially a digital blueprint—and lay down thin layers of plastic from the bottom up to build objects. There are files that claim to print everything from a working “Nerf gun” to an iPod dock.

Some companies are already taking legal action. Games Workshop, the maker of popular toy figurines, filed cease and desist notices in June against the 3D download website Thingiverse for posting files for some of its models. While a flood of lawsuits seems inevitable, some experts warn that corporations have a tough fight on their hands. “It’s difficult when it comes to copyright because it’s not like it is with music or movies—physical objects don’t have the same level of protection,” says Michael Weinberg, a lawyer for the Internet advocacy group Public Knowledge. Weinberg notes that while some designs might have patent or copyright protection, it is difficult for companies to claim a monopoly on the production of functional objects, meaning a company that makes tools would have a hard time bringing a successful suit against someone who prints a 3D hammer or wrench.

Not all brand items are necessarily protected, either. “Lego has some patents and some copyrights on designs, but the object itself doesn’t really have any protection,” says Weinberg. The last Lego block patent expired in 1989. The test will be how companies like Lego address 3D printed designs. “Lego can go after them as pirates or it can embrace them as big fans. We haven’t seen Lego running around suing people yet,” says Weinberg. But Lego has been aggressive in defending its products in the past, with mixed success. In 2003, Lego won a lawsuit in Norway against a company for capitalizing on brand confusion to sell building blocks. In 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed a Lego suit against its archrival Mega Brands.

Some argue that the responsibility for stopping illegal activity may lie with 3D printer manufacturers. Intellectual Ventures, a U.S. patent company, owns a patent for a 3D printing protection system that functions in a similar fashion to the digital rights management (DRM) systems that have emerged in the music industry—basically a way for printers to acknowledge that an object has been legally downloaded before printing. The company is quick to point out that there is no legal requirement for this technology.

The big fear within the 3D printing industry is that governments will step in with laws limiting the use of the technology. In the U.S., a 2011 Atlantic Council report floated the idea of creating a law similar to the Digital Millennium Copyrights Act that would allow copyright holders to demand files be removed due to infringement.

Groups like Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation hope that companies will choose to adapt to the new technology rather than spend millions fighting it. Manufacturers, for instance, could offer to sell 3D files through an official store, much like songs sold on iTunes. That, however, could have a dire effect on retailers. “As more organizations and individuals become manufacturers, the lines between manufacturer and customer will blur. When there is a retailer in between, those lines will blur too. Manufacturing will become retailing,” wrote the tech consulting firm CSC in a report last year on the future of 3D printing.

Any open embrace of 3D printing seems unlikely. It was nearly five years between Napster and the opening of iTunes stores across all platforms—a period that allowed illegal downloading to establish a firm toehold in the market. Like the music and film industries before them, manufacturers seem destined to slug it out in the courts, and history suggests it’s not going to be pretty.

]]>With the start of a new year, there’s no better time to review and reflect on the federal government’s complete and utter failure in providing leadership on digital issues. The country has been waiting on a digital strategy–a comprehensive plan for how Canada intends to compete in the global information economy–for years. For example:

“More than one hundred representatives from libraries, museums, archives, publishers, copyright collectives, the education community and government gathered last week in snowy Montebello, Que. for a national summit on a Canadian digital information strategy. The by-invitation-only event marked the culmination of a year-long cross-country effort to ensure that Canada is not left behind as our trading partners race to develop their own 21st century digitization plans.” – Toronto Star, Dec. 11, 2006

“Free access to government data and equitable access to the Internet itself are key to a prosperous digital economy, say many of those who took part in recent federal consultations. For two months, the government has been seeking public input on its strategy for a digital economy… [Industry Minister Tony Clement] did not provide a specific timeline, but suggested Canada would take about the same time as other countries, who have typically developed strategies in six to 18 months.” – CBC, July 14, 2010

“For over a year Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government have been talking about the need to create a digital economic strategy for the nation, with Industry Minister Tony Clement promising to reveal details this spring.” – IT Business, Mar. 23, 2011

“I will launch a Canadian-made digital economy strategy by the end of the year.” – Industry Minister Christian Paradis, Aug. 28, 2012

If the government’s latest broken promise is any indication, the wait is going to continue, despite numerous consultations and reports having already taken place. For those paying attention to other countries and their digital strategies (New Zealand had one in 2005, Japan in 2001), it’s exasperating at best, infuriating at worst.

Yet, the government could do worse. It could, as many fear, release a digital strategy that is low on specifics and without any real teeth. Such a plan would be a disservice. Canada is already behind in many ways, from web usage by businesses, to Internet access pricing, to research and development spending, to venture capital access. There are many problems to be fixed, so any digital strategy must take specific actions to get the country back on the right track.

The other danger with any sort of digital plan is the tendency to throw money at a problem in the hopes that it’ll fix itself. That’s also the wrong way to go, since government-provided funds are often squandered without any concrete results to show at the end.

Most importantly, a digital strategy must be bold. There is no sense in aiming for the future if you’re not aiming high. Timidity has no place in such a plan.

The government has already heard from a broad range of Canadians as to what the country’s strategy should contain. Here is a list of 10 suggestions, some of which are repeated from submissions and some of which are my own additions. The list–sort of a set of New Year’s resolution for government–is by no means comprehensive, but it would make for a good starting point.

Technology Minister: Creating a cabinet ministerial position that would deal with all things technological would go a long way to showing the public that the government does indeed take digital issues seriously. Which it currently doesn’t, obviously.

Merge Telecom and Broadcasting Acts: Telecom and broadcasting technologies have converged, as have their owners, so why are the laws governing them still separate? Indeed, the government should move to liberalize foreign ownership in broadcasting the same way it did last year with telecom. Maintaining the restrictions does much to counter any positives introduced by telecom ownership liberalization.

Infrastructure regulatory holiday: Any new company that wants to build a telecom network in Canada, whether wired or wireless, gets a 10-year exemption from any regulations affecting access to that network (in other words, they won’t have to give access to third-party independent internet service providers). The holiday could be even longer for northern Canada, where things are even more dire. Some might say this is unfair to the likes of Bell or Rogers or Northwestel, but those companies got to build their networks and customer bases with government-granted monopolies. Such an exemption might seem especially intriguing to certain search engine companies that are currently building fibre networks in the United States.

Broadband targets: Speaking of which, the government should institute pricing, speed and usage targets that ISPs must reach within three years. The targets would be set based on projections of what will be needed to measure among the top countries at that time. Failure by the ISPs to hit the targets would result in the government launching consultations on how to structurally separate network owners from retail operations, and/or the feasibility of building a nationally-owned fibre network. Is this de facto regulation? Yes indeed, but it’s market forces that have caused Canada to fall behind. When the carrot doesn’t do the trick, sometimes you need to turn to the stick.

Internet access subsidies: With broadband simply being too expensive for many poorer Canadians, a simple subsidy program is needed –- if your household income is under a certain amount, the government pays part of your monthly Internet bill. Not only would this connect the people who need Internet access the most, it would also saddle the government with a continually escalating tab. If that doesn’t cause politicians to spur better Internet service and prices, nothing will.

Computer programs: In that vein, there are also too many households that don’t have computers, wherein Internet access would obviously not make a lick of difference. The digital strategy should outline a specific plan to work with private-sector companies to provide such households not just with computers, but with the training required to use them effectively. Certain individuals have expressed a desire to help on this front; these people should be sought and hired to lead such projects.

Tech export credits: Canadian businesses aren’t using the Internet enough to reach global markets, so applying further tax rewards on sales specifically made using digital means might spur some to finally take online expansion seriously.

Foreign recruiting: Going the other way, the government should step up recruitment in countries that have large numbers of the sorts of skilled people needed here. Universities have tried various recruitment drives over the years, but they can only promise students so much. Government is much better positioned to deliver such workers jobs, not to mention a life in Canada.

Incubators, incubators, incubators: The venture capital problem might actually be one that can be helped with money. With early-stage investment identified as a real issue for Canadian startups, the government could accomplish much by funding lots of technology incubation projects, where entrepreneurs can cut their teeth until they get noticed by proper VCs.

R&D tax breaks: The federal government should take a cue from the provincial governments of Quebec, B.C. and Ontario, which created a vibrant video game industry through tax breaks. Those governments attracted large multinationals by giving them big discounts on labour costs, with the result being thousands of new jobs. More importantly, an ecosystem of very talented developers has formed, with Canada now becoming a leader in independent game design. The same model should be used to attract multinationals to set up research and development centres, with similar benefits likely to result.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/a-new-years-resolution-for-a-failed-digital-strategy/feed/1Maybe software patents can be fixedhttp://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/maybe-there-is-a-way-to-fix-software-patents/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/maybe-there-is-a-way-to-fix-software-patents/#commentsFri, 04 Jan 2013 19:49:34 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=333623The United States Patent and Trademark Office extends an olive branch to the tech community

It’s not the friendliest tactic to take in a negotiation, nor the most likely to succeed. But it’s probably the only honest reply software developers can offer the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which has extended a conditional, possibly symbolic, olive branch to the tech community.

Tech law blog Groklaw reports that the United States Patent and Trademark Office is inviting developers to attend a duo of roundtable discussions on the future of software patents, to be held in New York and in the Silicon Valley next month. They’re calling it the “Software Partnership,” and the intention is to get developers’ input on how their broken software patent system can be fixed.

It can’t.

Most developers will tell you that patents, which were introduced to incentivize innovation with mechanical inventions, have the opposite effect when applied to code. Code builds upon code, and assigning owners to each (vaguely defined) idea being built upon has resulted in a patent system that presents developers with their single biggest disincentive to innovate. Major tech firms go to war over patents, passing the cost of such skirmishes on to their customers. Shady patent trolls wait for inventors to stumble onto turf they claim as their own and then launch shakedowns that are pricier to fight than they are to appease. As Groklaw puts it, “it’s getting to the point that no one can code anything without potentially getting sued.”

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has carefully crafted its request for input. Rather than inviting a full-on assault on its right to exist in the software realm, the office is requesting specific input on three areas in which it seems willing to change. These areas generally involve seeking clearer language describing what a patent covers.

This is a major sticking point — the original sin of software patents is their ridiculous generality, which allows patent owners to claim ownership over broad areas of digital activity. For example, patent trolls have claimed sole ownership of things like “networked gaming systems,” “Internet test-taking” and “audio and video transmission.” So yeah, maybe they should have to get a bit more specific.

You know what would be most specific? Having to patent the source code itself, instead of a line or two about what that code does. Of course, that would mean disclosing the source code. This would honour the original “patent bargain,” which grants inventors with a temporary monopoly in exchange for sharing the recipe with the world, in time.

Seems like a good fix, no? It would serve developers who have an honest desire to protect their specific inventions and it would benefit the public, as all proprietary code would eventually become open source.

But good luck selling firms like Apple and Microsoft on the idea of a “temporary” monopoly.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/maybe-there-is-a-way-to-fix-software-patents/feed/2You’re about to become a copyright criminalhttp://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/youre-about-to-become-a-copyright-criminal/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/youre-about-to-become-a-copyright-criminal/#commentsFri, 30 Sep 2011 17:19:08 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=218005Have a look at the Conservatives' bill. Can you spot every way you could be in trouble?

If you’re a student, or if you consume a lot of music, movies and TV, or if you do fun stuff on the Internet, there’s a rather good chance the Conservatives’ Copyright Reform Bill will make you a criminal.

How? In plenty of ways. Here are a few:

Your professor assigns you a digital course pack. It contains excerpts of copyrighted material, but because you’re using it for education, you get a pass. At least, that is, as long as you delete those files within 30 days of the end of class. If you keep them around to use for reference in your honours thesis, or if a stray copy makes its way onto your phone and you forget to erase it, then you’ve broken the law.

You transfer your CD collection to your iPod. Two years later, you get a new iPod, and give the old one to your little sister. If you neglect to destroy your CD collection first, you’ve become a criminal.

And that’s just for starters. There are many other harmless things millions of Canadians do in the privacy of their homes that will soon constitute copyright infringement. I’ll be back soon with a few more.

For now, here’s the bill. Have a read, and see if you can add one or two potential criminal scenarios of your own in the comments.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/youre-about-to-become-a-copyright-criminal/feed/37Copyright reform: the only thing more depressing than another electionhttp://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/copyright-reform-the-only-thing-more-depressing-than-another-election/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/copyright-reform-the-only-thing-more-depressing-than-another-election/#commentsFri, 25 Mar 2011 20:51:28 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=179276What do we even want out of it anymore?

With little joy or passion, newsrooms are gearing up to dutifully cover every aspect of an election that nobody really wants. For journalists, the coming weeks will bring nothing but grind, a decaying echo of something that once seemed important, exciting, even fun. Twitter is filled with their tears, the poor babies.

Do I seem glib? I am glib! Glib and glum. I have no pity for those who cover politics, because I’m too busy pitying myself. I cover copyright. And that means I’m stuck on “repeat” for years, not weeks.

When Parliament dissolves, so too will bill C-32, the third attempt at copyright reform in six years. It’s a flawed bill with one killer feature—it’s passable. Nobody would have been happy, but everybody could have gone home.

Instead, we will have to start all over again. Whichever party forms a government will inherit the curse of Canadian copyright. Government ministers will be doomed to endure the relentless lobbying efforts of legacy media on the one side and the incessant outrage of geeks like me on the other. They will have to pretend to respect us, pretend to care what any of us have to say, and pretend that a happy balance between these rival interests can indeed be reached. More than anything, they will have to pay lip service to the idea that new copyright legislation actually matters to Canadians—that it will get creators paid and criminals punished. It will not.

Stephen Harper knew what he wanted out of copyright reform: to get the U.S. off his back. But I’m losing sight of what anyone else has to gain.

Let’s make this complicated
While the government apologized for what the aboriginal residential schools were, some pundits seem determined to focus on what they weren’t.

“Had government agents come to round up your kids and mine, I doubt we would have kept quiet about it for 80 years or more,” Lorne Gunter writes in the Edmonton Journal in praise of yesterday’s apology. But it’s important to recognize, he argues, that the system was “well-intentioned” and not harmful or destructive in every single case. Which is a fair point—a sense of proportion is important. But comparing modern “native skills training” programs to the “early form of such training” offered at residential schools, and asking how the program could have been “evil” then but “magnanimous” now is ridiculous. Surely no educational system that’s predicated on abducting its students from their parents has any claim to magnanimousness, no matter what good it accomplishes.

John Robson, writing in the Ottawa Citizen, welcomes the apology but rejects the notion that the residential schools were “responsible for the catastrophic collision between traditional aboriginal culture and European modernity.” This is a notion we’d not come across until Robson introduced it, but we’re happy to join him in declaring it bunk. He also “utterly reject[s] any suggestion that Canadian aboriginals were dwelling in Eden until the Europeans came and expelled them”—again, never heard that one before, but it sounds perfectly reasonable to us.

The Citizen‘s Susan Riley lauds Harper’s “gracious apology,” which was delivered with “what appear[ed] to be genuine empathy,” and says it’s damn good thing for the Liberals that “no one in Harper’s entourage has the wit, or insight, to realize that a less aggressive prime minister”—such as we saw on Wednesday—”might significantly help Conservative prospects.” If Harper was really “intent on broadening his base,” she argues, he’d “relegate childish provocateurs like [Pierre] Poilievre, [John] Baird and [Jason] Kenney to the margins.” Instead, it seems we just got a one-day holiday—except for Poilievre, of course—from Harper’s “Sesame Street political ops squad.”

Helpful adviceTheGlobe and Mail‘s Jeffrey Simpson urges all Canadians to read and consider the OECD’s “suffocating prose” on the subject of all the things we’re doing wrong, and what we should do to fix them: drop agriculture subsidies, particularly in the dairy sector; allow banks to merge and become “global players”; harmonize unemployment insurance programs across the country; and, in Alberta, “sock away much more [oil] royalty money in the Alberta Heritage Fund.” These tall foreheads have “done the country an important favour,” Simpson believes, by “gor[ing] so many Canadian sacred cows” at once.

“As recently as 2001, Canadian farmers were the least dependent [on government], outside Australia and New Zealand,” Lorne Gunter writes in the National Post, looking at the same OECD report. But now “the OECD now pegs direct support at nearly $17,000 per farm per year, or almost $4-billion overall”—not including “supply managed” sectors like dairy, which are even worse. It’s no coincidence, says Gunter, that the Australian and New Zealand agriculture industries are both the “healthiest” and the “freest and least dependent on government handouts.” Canada should take heed.

Crisis management
“It is rare and usually counter-intuitive for an opposition party to force the spotlight of an election campaign away from an incumbent government’s record and onto a complex policy of its own,” the Toronto Star‘s Chantal Hébert warns Stéphane Dion—especially when, as is now the case, “public confidence in the government’s economic management [is] slipping.” But in forging ahead with his carbon tax proposal, and by “star[ing] down calls from his shadow cabinet for a snap election” last week, it’s clear Dion has dug in his heels. “For the Liberals,” Hébert concludes, “a make-or-break pre-election summer could … turn into a season of leadership discontent.”

“It’s 1980 all over again,” says the Citizen‘s Dan Gardner: oil production “struggles to keep up with soaring demand,” gas prices are skyrocketing, a recession looms, and there are “warnings of worse to come as experts agree that the era of cheap oil is gone forever.” And as ever, he warns, such experts might be wrong—new supply may emerge, leading again to overconsumption and prolonging the vicious glut-shortage-glut-shortage cycle. The solution, he says, is “to establish a floor on oil now”—a minimum price, in other words, to nip the cycle in the bud. “Conservation gains wouldn’t be lost,” he argues, “alternative energy would remain a realistic possibility…and the West would be much better able to withstanding future shortages.”

Duly noted
Colby Cosh, writing in the Post, profiles British Columbia’s little-known Therapeutics Initiative, which “provide[s] independent, skeptical analyses of clinical data about new health therapies” to the provincial government, thereby saving significant quantities of money—and in the case of Vioxx, which was less prescribed in BC than elsewhere on TI’s advice, lives. The initiative is now under fire from a government task force, he notes—one “stacked with members who had past and present connections to the drug business”—on grounds of “resistance to meaningful stakeholder engagement.” “Note,” Cosh writes, “how that buzzword ‘stakeholder’ puts the B.C. taxpayer and the vulnerable patient on an equal footing with drug vendors.”

Terence Corcoran, writing in the Financial Post, says even if Bill C-61 dies on the order paper, it will have been worth it to claw back some common sense from “the Telecom Trotskyites who believe the Internet is a giant open cosmos, a massive free public space into which everybody can scoop up whatever floats by with little or no regard to ownership.” Regular folks have no trouble recognizing proper ownership of creative material and accepting limits on its free distribution, says Corcoran, and those who don’t share “a surprisingly consistent grudge against corporations and the business world in general.”

The Globe‘s John Ibbitson looks at the life and times of Michelle Obama, and debates whether her outspokenness might threaten her husband’s campaign for president just as much as her compelling life story will help it.

Estimates of the number of victims of human traffickers currently “working in Canada in sexual servitude, [or] forced or bonded labour” range from 800 to 15,000, the Vancouver Sun‘s Daphne Bramham notes, and we have “good laws” in place to combat the problem. “Enforcement,” however, “is lacking”—from Vancouver’s “kiddie stroll” to the community of Bountiful, whose polygamists are well known to shuttle children back and forth across the 49th parallel. Vancouver Olympic organizers are “incorporat[ing] anti-trafficking measures into the over-all security plan for the Games,” she notes, but “without a fully funded, national strategy … it may be too little, too late.”